Big Barda is the Germaine Greer of superheroines, there is no doubt about who she is and what she wants and no man is going to tell her what to do. Her debut in Mister Miracle # 4 (October, 1971), published 50 years ago today, 13 July, 1971, is epochal. At a time when women did not have equal rights, Big Barda decided her own and in her journey with Mister Miracle, she provided him the ‘maximum’.
Like her real-world contemporaries, Mary Tyler Moore, Carole King, Angela Davis, she expresses herself as she truly is, no small feat for a woman in 1971 in our world or hers. Like Greer’s 1990s remembrance of her hugely influential book, the Female Eunuch (1970)¹, Barda wants to live with the ‘…freedom to be a person, with dignity, integrity, nobility, passion, pride that constitute personhood. Freedom to run, shout, talk loudly and sit with your knees apart. Freedom to know and love the earth and all that swims, lies, and crawls upon it.’²
Barda is no fanboy, fetishistic, fantasy-engineered, cos-play, lust object. She is a proper woman in the best and fullest sense. Straight out of Kirby’s favourite Marilyn Munro physical form playbook, she is big in all senses, a big body, which she is entirely comfortable with and bigger than life. The total opposite to the prevailing late period, counter-culture, idealised female form, the thin, leggy, rock trophy waif wife Bianca Jagger (then recently-married to tax exile Mick) or the earlier mid-60s Twiggy.
Barda is representative of second wave feminist women who challenged the patriarchal revolution, that power to the people’ includes women.³ I can see her rounding up the brainwashed Manson supplicant succubuses like Squeaky Fromme who still roamed Kirby’s Los Angeles streets, and packing them off to a work camp. ‘I’ve no time to cuddle your neuroses!’
Scott Free’s pararmour is military. She is a soldier in Darkseid’s army. Barda helped Scott escape from Granny Goodness’ terror orphanage where they were both imprisoned yet she did not leave. She has a bond with Mister Miracle that spans the years and the two of them exemplify many qualities opposite to the traditional gender roles of the time.
Barda is earth to Scott’s spirit, she is strength to his subtlety, size to his slim form, warrior to his priest, ground to his flight, passion to his intellect, action to his thought. In many ways Barda is more ‘man’ and Scott is more ‘woman’. In the humble pages of a then throwaway medium, Kirby is subverting the expectations of the superhero comic audience, he is, as usual, reflecting his times. Without fully realising it, the two characters are being made for each other, they are two proud people who need the other but are only just beginning to see it.
The two of them take moments to teach the other about how they have changed since they last met. Barda stands her ground about her decision to stay at Granny’s and not do what Scott told her to and escape with him (‘Yes, perhaps I should have…but I stayed—to become..what I am.’). Scott pulls Barda up on her reaction to Oberon’s dig after the Kirby avatar has sized her up and reckoned Mister Miracle would be better off without the female warrior. Barda goes full army and says ‘The little rat—he needs a disciplined tongue!’ Scott counters, ‘This is a house of friends, Barda! The strong don’t rule here!’
Scott, the abused child, sees no justice in distorted discipline, no gain in inflicting more pain. His is a New Genesis message of vulnerability, acceptance, freedom, love, reconciliation, qualities more often associated with women. Barda is all consequence, action, punishment, traits traditionally associated with men and practiced to perfidy perfection on Apokolips.
Like John Sinclair of the White Panthers⁴ or John Lennon however, Scott Free has some way to go on the road to female equality. Finished with explaining how he escaped Doctor Bedlam’s trap and 5000 raving maniacs where we left him last issue, the clever, scientific, detached, sensitive miracle man, dressed in an apron while cooking a meal for her, another role reversal many readers would not have seen at the time at home or in popular culture, patronisingly remarks, ‘Oh Barda’s all right. She’s just a child, you know. A powerful, deadly child playing soldier.’
Behind him, Barda has shed her military uniform and has stripped down to her undergarments, which upon seeing her, causes the boys to exclaim, (Scott) ‘I take it back Oberon! That’s a big, beautiful woman playing soldier. (Oberon) ‘Whoever made that gal wear a uniform should be horse-whipped.’
There is no sense here that Kirby is pandering to the reader. Barda’s clothing decision is completely in character. The battle is over, she’s back in the barracks and someone’s cooked good food. She’s just showing the freedom to run, talk loudly and sit with her knees apart. Her sexuality is not simply located in her body, it’s in how she carries herself, how she relates to her community, to her friends, to her mission.
Like all good relationships, the Barda-Miracle dance is one
of strong wills and revelations, disagreements and surprises. Big Barda sets
Scott, free, in so many ways (and vice versa). She is a natural woman for a
miracle man.
‘When my soul was in the lost and found
You came along to claim it
I didn't know just what was wrong with me
'Til your kiss helped me name it
Now I'm no longer doubtful, of what I'm living for
And if I make you happy I don't need to do more
'Cause you make me feel
You make me feel
You make me feel like a natural woman (woman).’
Carole King, from her 1971 album,
Tapestry, released 10 February, 1971
¹The Female Eunuch
by Greer debuted to ‘mixed reviews’ in 1970 but soon became a feminist classic.
By March, 1971 it had almost sold out its second printing. In July 1971, Eunuch
was number # 3 on Time Magazine’s non-fiction bestseller list. Time Magazine 5
July, 1971, pg. 60.
²Greer, Germaine
(1993). The
Female Eunuch. London: Flamingo. p.11.
³Yoko Ono helped
bring about John Lennon’s realisation of his sexism in 1971. Lennon said ‘how
can you talk about power to the people unless you realise the people is both
sexes?’ Ono completed the lesson, ‘…if you are a slave around the house, how
can you expect to make a revolution outside it?’ Doggett, pg 422.
⁴Formerly macho
leader of the White Panthers John Sinclair underwent a revelation in jail and
denounced her own ‘persistent sexism’ in a June 1971 bulletin, ‘Free Our
Sisters/Free Our Selves!’ Doggett, pg. 421.
Research this
article:
Comics:
-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website
-The Indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’
Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows).
Popular culture:
-Helter Skelter, the True Story of the Manson
Murders (Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, W.W. Norton, 1994)
-There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett,
Canongate, 2007)
-Time Magazine, 5 July, 1971
-Uncovering the Sixties (Abe Peck, Pantheon,
1985) .
Michael Mead is a 55-year-old New Zealand
comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual"
commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come
from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the
state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer
or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult.
As part of this, he is vain enough to think
he can bring new insights into Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50th
anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever
People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he will publish a contextual commentary.
This is his 20th Fourth World commentary. Check out his earlier entries on this
blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for
God's sake!
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